PM’s sleeping requirement for the five-hour flight he and his wife took to Thatcher’s funeral last month prompts complaints from opposition MK, Movement for the Quality of Government

By Times of Israel staff May 11, 2013, 8:50 pm

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faced heavy criticism Saturday after it was revealed he spent $127,000 (over 450,000 shekels) of taxpayers’ money having an El Al plane fitted out with a double-bed in an enclosed bedroom for his five-hour flight to London last month to attend the funeral of British prime minister Margaret Thatcher.

The cost of Netanyahu’s April 16-17 flight to and from London was revealed by Channel 10 News. The prime minister is only permitted to use local airlines for his flights, for security reasons, but the demand for a double bed excluded two of the three Israeli airlines — Israir and Arkia — from the contract to arrange the London flight, because their aircraft are not large enough. Their cost for the flight, in which the Netanyahus would have enjoyed business class or first class seats that recline as beds, would have been $300,000, the TV news said. El Al charged $427,000 for the flight because of the additional cost of installing the requested bed in an enclosed bedroom. Thus the requirement cost the taxpayer an additional $127,000.

Channel 10 noted that President Shimon Peres, who is about to turn 90, did not request a bed even on a recent 11-hour flight to Korea, and never does so on flights to Europe. It said prime ministers Ehud Olmert and Ariel Sharon also never asked for a bed to be installed on their flights to and from Europe, and that Sharon sometimes chose not to have a bed installed even on transatlantic flights. …

Netanyahu was personally invited to the funeral by the Thatcher family. Peres was also invited, but it was decided after consultations that only Netanyahu would attend.

Israeli budget allocations to defense are set to reach a record-high NIS 59 billion in 2018: here.

Israeli watchdog group Peace Now accused the government on Thursday of taking steps to legalise four unauthorised settlement outposts in the West Bank, just days before US Secretary of State John Kerry arrives on a peace mission.

Not to vote is to abandon parliament to these people. This is especially true of Arab citizens – polls predict almost half of them won’t vote at all.

The reasons are understandable – a protest against the “Jewish” state, against blatant discrimination, despair of Israel’s ability to change.

But abstention is shooting yourself in the foot. The situation is dire now, but it can still become much, much worse. The Supreme Court – which, by comparison with the Knesset, has a tradition of protecting Arab rights – will be cowed into impotence. Discriminatory laws will proliferate – in fact, some on the right are now openly talking of denying Arabs the right to vote. Why grant them their wish voluntarily?

So, vote. But for whom?

My method is to write down all the election lists in a random order, then strike out all those I wouldn’t vote for if my life depended on it. That’s the easy bit.

First, Likud-Beitenu. Likud alone was bad enough. The addition of Avigdor Lieberman‘s Israel-Beteinu makes it even more destructive.

I agree with US President Barack Obama that Netanyahu is leading us to certain disaster. His total rejection of peace, the obsession with illegal settlements on Palestinian land, the deepening occupation – all these are turning Israel into an apartheid state. Already the outgoing Knesset has passed abominable, anti-democratic laws. Now all the “moderate” Likud members have been purged the process will accelerate.

With Lieberman and his acolytes joining Likud the situation becomes more dangerous still. Netanyahu will act even more extremely for fear of losing the leadership to Lieberman, now his number two.

The emergence of Naftali Bennett as the star of the elections makes things even more desperate. It seems a rule of the Israeli right that no-one is so extreme that you can’t find someone worse.

The next group to strike off the list is a religious one. It consists mainly of two parties, the Ashkenazi “Torah Jewry” and the Sephardi Shas.

Both used to be quite moderate in matters of peace and war, but those days are long gone. Generations of a narrowly ethnocentric, xenophobic education have spawned a leadership of nationalist rightists. Bennett too was brought up in this camp.

As if their aggression towards Palestinians was not enough these parties want to impose the Jewish Halacha law, essentially the equivalent to the Muslim Sharia. They oppose almost automatically anything progressive – a written constitution, separation between synagogue and state, civil marriage, same-sex marriage, abortion … off the list.

Then we come to the self-styled “centrist” parties.

The largest is the Labour Party under Shelly Yachimovich, which is polling at around 15 per cent.

I’ve never liked her but that shouldn’t influence my vote. She has taken a moribund party and reinvigorated it.

The trouble is she has also helped to eradicate peace from the national agenda. She has made overtures to the settlers and their allies.

She pays obligatory lip-service to the two-state solution, but has done nothing to further it.

She has promised not to join a Netanyahu-Lieberman government, but experience tells us not to take such pledges too seriously. There’s always a “national emergency” lurking round the corner.

Even if she keeps her word a peace-denier can do a lot of damage from the opposition benches. So Labour’s not for me.

Yachimovich’s main competitor is Tzipi Livni. On the face of it she’s the opposite – her main and almost sole election plank is the resumption of negotiations with the Palestinian Authority.

Fine, but Livni and her former boss Ehud Olmert were in power for almost four years, during which they started two wars (Lebanon II and Cast Lead) and didn’t make any progress towards peace. Why trust her now?

I have never heard Livni utter a single word of sympathy or compassion for the Palestinian people. My suspicion is that she is interested in an endless “peace process,” not peace itself.

What does he stand for? Well, he’s a former TV personality who looks good on TV. He reminds me of Groucho Marx: “These are my principles. If you don’t like them I have others.”

For me he is “Lapid lite” compared to his late father “Tommy” Lapid, who also moved from TV to politics. Father Lapid was a more complicated character – likeable in personal contact, very offensive on TV, an extreme rightist in national affairs and an extreme enemy of the religious camp.

His son just wants to be a minister under Netanyahu. Not for me.

The Arab national lists are clearly not pitching for Jewish votes, meaning they’re doomed to impotence. Which leaves us with two potential lists which might deserve a vote – Hadash and Meretz.

Both are close to what I believe in – they are actively engaged in the struggle for peace with the Palestinians and social justice at home.

How to choose?

The driving force in Hadash is the Communist Party. Should that deter me?

I’ve never been a communist. I’d say I was a social-democrat. I have many memories of the Communist Party in the cold war, some positive, some negative. I don’t like Stalinism and they were once Stalinist. But that’s not the point. We’re voting for the future, not the past.

Hadash is a joint Arab-Jewish party, in fact the only one. This is enormously to its credit.

Sadly for the majority of Israelis it is viewed as an “Arab” party, since 95 per cent of its voters are Arabs. It does have a Jewish Knesset member, the very active and commendable Dov Hanin. If he headed a list of his own he could have attracted many young voters and conceivably changed the electoral landscape.

Then there’s Meretz. There is something old and dreary about this party. It says all the right things about peace and social justice, democracy and human rights. But there are no new ideas, no new slogans.

A large number of leading intellectuals, writers and artists have come out for Meretz. The party has taken great pains not to list leftists without clear Zionist credentials though.

A significant presence in the Knesset for either Hadash or Meretz would still change Israel for the better. But neither is likely.

The day after these disastrous elections the effort to create a new landscape must begin. Never again should we be faced with this dilemma.

Let’s hope that next time we have the chance to vote with enthusiasm for a dynamic party that embodies our convictions and our hopes.

A party that can change the appalling course of Israeli politics.

Uri Avnery is founding member of Gush Shalom and a former member of the Knesset.

Its targets for lower budget deficits after 2013 guarantee even harsher measures in the next few years. The budget, to be discussed in parliament in October, is expected to be opposed by some of Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu’s coalition partners, particularly the religious parties, whose supporters are desperately poor and depend on Israel’s already inadequate social safety net.

VAT (a sales tax) will rise from 16 to 17 percent. Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz ordered an immediate tax hike on cigarettes and beer. As it is, revenues from indirect taxes, which affect the poorest the most, are higher than direct taxes on income and higher than in most other Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries.

Income tax rates for those earning more than the average wage (NIS8,881, or $2,220 a month) will rise by 1 percent, and by 2 percent on higher earners (NIS67,000 or $17,000 a month). Such is the enormous inequality that just one quarter of wage earners are paid more than the average. To put this in perspective, the tax cuts for the rich introduced in 2003 have led to a cumulative loss of more than NIS40 billion ($10 billion). The top rate of tax will remain unchanged at 48 percent.

All government departments except defence, education and housing, face cuts of at least 5 percent.

Following the social protests last summer, the Trajtenberg Commission recommended free education for all from the age of three, to be funded out of a NIS2.5 billion ($625 million) cut in defence. But the government has increased defence spending, not cut it. Now the funding for education will come from cuts to the rest of social services.

Suspected right-wing extremists set fire to a block of flats housing African migrant workers in Jerusalem yesterday, a day after PM Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the “swift deportation” of 25,000 undocumented migrants.

No-one was killed in the arson attack on the building on Jaffa road, but four of the 10 Eritrean people who lived there suffered burns and smoke inhalation. The attackers daubed “Get out of the neighbourhood” on a wall.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry issued a statement condemning the attack. “There is no justification for such a heinous crime that endangers people’s lives,” it said.

Migrants in Tel Aviv have been targeted by a series of fire bomb attacks in recent weeks but yesterday’s assault was the first in Jerusalem.

The crowd responded by chanting: “The people want to expel the Sudanese.” They then went on a rampage in which African-owned shops were vandalised and looted and Sudanese bystanders beaten up.

Mr Netanyahu criticised the violence. But on Sunday he sought to appease the mob by ordering the “swift deportation” of 25,000 so-called illegal immigrants.

Addressing his cabinet, Mr Netanyahu conceded that Israel cannot deport Eritrean and Sudanese people who have escaped persecution in their home countries because Israel is a signatory to the 1951 UN Refugee Convention.

He said his government will accelerate construction of a detention camp to house 10,000 undocumented migrants in the Negev desert.

Sunday also saw a law go into effect that empowers Israeli authorities to jail undocumented migrants for up to three years.

Just two of the 1,500 requests for asylum registered with the Israeli government between 2009 and 2011 were accepted.

They demanded that right-wing PM Benjamin Netanyahu and his administration step down, charging that they have failed to deliver on promises to improve social services and infrastructure and rein in the soaring cost of living.

Many carried placards reading: “Peace requires social justice” and “When the government is against the people, the people are against the government.”

Mr Za’tara accused the government of scapegoating vulnerable or minority communities to deflect pressure for progressive change. “Refugees and infiltrators, haredim (ultra-Orthodox Jews) and Arabs – all are guilty, except the rule of capital.

“We say that the biggest threat to society is first and foremost the Israeli government.”

Protesters marched from three working-class neighbourhoods to Rabin Square while smaller demonstrations took place in Jerusalem, Haifa, Kiryat Shmona in the north, Eilat in the south and several other cities.

Participants held up placards reading, “The people demand social justice” and “we want social justice, not charity.”

Nevertheless, around 1,000 protesters marched on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s official residence in east Jerusalem to demand his resignation in light of soaring food costs, low wages and education budget cuts, while at least nine people were arrested for blocking roads.

“We’ll renew the protest in full force should the government continue its foot-dragging.”

One participant in yesterday’s rally who gave his name as Yotam said: “I was at the protests last summer and nothing changed.

“The place where change happens is in the Knesset and we aren’t represented there.

“There is power in the streets but it needs to be used.”

Unlike last summer, the “Occupy Israel” social protest Saturday night included explicit anti-government messages and universal human rights language. Could this be the start of a civil rebellion? Here.

Spaniards enraged by politicians’ failure to reverse economic policies that have left one in two young people out of work took to the streets in force over the weekend: here.

Mass Anti-Austerity Protests Sweep Through Spain. Staff, RT News: “At least 100,000 protesters angered by the country’s grim economic prospects turned out for street demonstrations in 80 cities across Spain. In the capital Madrid, thousands of protesters chanted and beat drums as they marched from different directions to converge on the central Puerta del Sol Square. Marches were also held in Barcelona, Bilbao, Malaga and Seville. The four day-long demonstration marks the one-year anniversary of the ‘Indignants’ protest movement, as Spain’s economic woes deepen by the day”: here.

Spain is slashing health and education budgets – but there’s plenty of cash left for bankers: here.

Eleven anti-capitalist protesters were arrested this weekend in central London amid allegations of heavy-handed policing after a rally through the capital: here.

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An estimated 150,000 mostly young people in Israel, both Jewish and Arab, protested Saturday over spiralling living costs and the economic and social policies of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: here.